


Until you're home again

by Age or Wizardry (ageorwizardry)



Category: Annie On My Mind - Nancy Garden
Genre: Epistolary, F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 13:57:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ageorwizardry/pseuds/Age%20or%20Wizardry
Summary: Liza sends Annie little pieces of home to carry with her abroad.





	Until you're home again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cyphomandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyphomandra/gifts).



Dear Annie,

If I've planned this right, this letter should be waiting for you at your first tour stop in England. Surprise!

I wanted it to be a surprise for you, a pleasant surprise, I hope—a little piece of home already waiting for you when you get there, all the way to another country for the first time.

And this is why I spent so much time talking to that man at the going-away party the week before you guys left—he's married to one of the members of the band you're opening for, and he's been sending letters to his wife while she's away on tour for years! So he told me all about how much time I should allow for the letters to get there, and how much extra postage to use—even which hotels are the best at keeping letters for you if they get there before you and actually passing them on to you! So I have A Plan, and if it all works out you should get a letter from me for each of the weeks you're gone. Let's see how it works out.

I want to tell you again how proud I am of you, that you were offered this opportunity and that you took it. I know we've had a lot of mountains to work on climbing, all at once: both of us graduating, and me finding a job out here, and finding a place for us to finally move in together. And now you're going away to tour Europe as a real professional singer! It's a whole range of mountains, and that can seem overwhelming—for me, too—but I really believe that what you told me your grandmother always said was right, and the view from the top will be worth the journey. I know you hated the idea of leaving me for so long, so soon—without even getting to unpack all our boxes first!—and I'm sure you know I miss you like hell. I also would rather be spending all these mornings waking up next to you after going to sleep with you the night before—getting ready and making breakfast and starting to get used to the routine of going to work and coming home to a home you're in. But aside from the inconvenience, and the frustration, and the bad timing—it's so exciting! I know you were never sure about whether you'd pursue a singing career once you finished school, so you weren't sure about whether you'd do this, but I'm so glad you decided to. It makes a future as a professional singer that much more possible, right? And even if you ultimately don't end up singing for a living—at least you'll always have been to Europe!

What is England like? I know at the party everyone said that when you're doing touring shows you don't actually get to see much of where you're traveling, not the way you do when you're traveling just for fun, so I know you probably won't get to tour castles or go to museums the way you'd like to otherwise. But I'm sure you'll still get to see plenty of stuff that's different from here! Even if it's just what sorts of candy they have in convenience stores. (They must have convenience stores, right?) Let me know if you see any castles, even if it's just through a train window! I don't know if you'll really be able to send letters back to me while you're gone—but you could write down what you're doing and seeing in a notebook for me to read when you get back (if that wouldn't seem too much like you're back doing assignments for class again!). Or you can just tell me about everything when you get back.

I'd love to travel to England with you someday, for fun, just us, and then we could go see as many tapestries and old castles where knights lived and concerts (I'm sure there are concerts you want to see in England, my love) as you could want.

Love, Your  
Liza

P.S. And, yes, this letter is what I was working on that I wouldn't tell you about before you left. I'm sorry, I know it upset you that I was spending time doing something else instead of spending it with you, in the last days before you left—maybe it was a bad idea to do this in secret, as a surprise. I'm sorry we fought. I'm mailing this letter now so it will be there in time, and it's still a few days before you leave, so I'll try to make it up to you and make them extra-good—by the time you get this, you'll know how that turned out. And—just in case you feel this way—don't feel bad about getting mad at me, like you shouldn't have gotten mad because I was actually trying to do something nice for you. I was doing something you didn't like and not explaining it, so since you didn't have all the information, and you might have reacted differently if you had, that was my fault. You getting mad was fair.

I love you, and I know you still love me. I miss you. 

* * *

Dear Annie,

First of all, good news: YOUR ORANGE CAT IS ALL RIGHT!

I know you were so worried about not being able to find him the day you left—that if he got outside, he might not realize this was home yet and not be able to find his way back. It turns out that was never even a question, because he never got outside at all—the silly thing somehow got himself shut inside one of the kitchen cabinets we put boxes in front of, and he must have either kept quiet or been asleep when we spent all that time looking for him until I had to take you to the airport. Later that night it was no mystery finding where he was; he was like a siren! So he's perfectly safe and if you've been worried all this time, you can put your worries to rest.

I went to that concert you were disappointed that you'd miss. I know your friend Ann from the music program was going, too (Ann and Annie—did you guys ever think about roping in an Anne to complete the set?), so I'm sure she could tell you better than I could about all the musical sort of stuff you'd have been interested in and would have known how to listen for. You know I still don't really know anything about music—I just know what I like, which is mostly when I hear you sing—but even if I can't tell you much about the music itself, I can tell you how I felt about it.

There was one song they sang that reminded me of the song you wrote, the girl singing to her distant lover—maybe you're even singing it now, and thinking of me. (Although probably not right now, looking at the clock—the time zones wouldn't work out right.) Anyway, I don't mean that it sounds like either your song is copying theirs or their song is copying yours—they didn't remind me of each other in that sense. It's more that the songs are like sisters, in a way. They're two different ways of working out the same sort of thing. Theirs was the sad version, where the girl doesn't know if she's ever going to see her lover again, where yours was more hopeful, certain that she would. (Of course, when you wrote it, you could be really sure we were going to see each other again!)

And you will be able to tell from the dirty pawprints that Your Orange Cat says hello, too. Now I'd better finish this and go find whatever he got into and clean it up, including cleaning him off. You may hear the yowls of protest even in Europe—

Love,  
Liza

* * *

Dear Annie,

Bon voyage! I know that's for when people are leaving, but I don't know what they say in French when people are arriving instead. And this letter should find you in France!

If England was an adventure, France and Germany may be even bigger ones. At least in England you knew the language. What a pity this tour isn't taking you to Italy! Then you could wow everyone by being able to translate, instead of having to depend on others to get by.

I have a couple cooking stories to relate. First, I did that dumb thing I do sometimes, where I think it would be so nice to cook with the window open, but the flames are kind of low, and then they blow out in the wind. I'm still not used to a gas stove! But don't worry, I caught it right away—you will not be hearing any news of an explosion all the way from Europe. And I have finally learned my lesson this time, I swear! Enjoying the open window will be for after I'm done cooking.

I made another try at recreating that salad you liked so much at our fancy celebration lunch right after I got here, and I think I got a little closer with the salad dressing this time. When I was washing the kale, at first I thought there was a lot more dirt to wash off than usual, but then I realized it was just that the leaves were so dark green, they made purple shadows along the veins and curls. It was almost like the kale had a five o'clock shadow—and then I thought that if you were here, I could have told you about it, and you would probably have done some kind funny voice for the kale with a five o'clock shadow. Or something else clever and imaginative that I can't even think of, because I'm not you.

And then I put lots of nuts in the salad! I know you think they ruin a salad, but because you're not here, I put nuts in the whole thing.

I've been trying to find things to enjoy about your being gone, because I might as well, but so far it makes for a pretty short list.

Can't wait till you're home and I'm back to putting nuts only in my own salad bowl again,

Love, Your  
Liza

* * *

Dear Annie,

You'll never believe! ~~Ms. Stev~~ Isabelle and Katherine (it can still be so hard for me to remember not to call them Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer) are in California!

I was so surprised when they called me up to see if I wanted to meet up with them. They hated that they missed you, of course, but they were so excited for you when I told them why you were away—and they're here for long enough that you may still be able to see them right after you come back. "If she's not so jet-lagged she doesn't want to do anything but sleep for a day or two," Katherine commented, so they'll understand if you turn out not to be up for it.

We had a great time catching up at lunch on Saturday. It's the greatest thing—Isabelle is teaching again! At a community college near their house in the country, this time—and I guess either they don't mind about why she lost her previous teaching job at Foster, or she thinks it's not likely they'd do the same thing, because she doesn't seem very worried that they might find out about her and Katherine.

At one point they were telling me about all the near-disasters that beset their preparations for the trip, and Isabelle said, "It can be hard to find reliable people to take care of all the animals while we're gone."

And then she just looked at me, sternly—more sternly than she ever did when she was actually my teacher!—and I couldn't help reacting like I was still a scolded student. I know my face got red, and I sort of gasped and said "I—!" like I was preparing some sort of apology or excuse. Oh, Annie, I don't even know how I expected to finish the sentence! "I promise not to ever again have sex with my girlfriend in your house when I'm only supposed to be there to feed your cats while you're away?" It's absurd! Obviously we'd never do it again anyway, even if we were ever looking after their cats again, which will never happen since we live across the entire country!

But by then Isabelle was laughing—she was only saying it to tease me—and then we all were laughing. Annie, if someone had tried to tell me back then that thing people say, "Someday we'll look back on this and laugh"—right after we were discovered, and all the awful things that happened after—if someone had tried to tell me that back then, I think I'd probably have wanted to punch them. I definitely wouldn't have believed them. But here we were, only a few years later, all laughing about it—and, Annie, if you'd been there with us, I think you probably would have been laughing, too.

I brought them to see our house afterward—they sympathized with the boxes—and I introduced them to our cats (Princeton greeted them with regal grace, and Your Orange Cat ran and hid), and even showed them our neighbors' chickens over the fence. They were pretty surprised that people are even allowed to keep chickens within city limits—"Do you know how far out of the city we had to move to have chickens?" Isabelle said, looking at Katherine—but of course from everything else they said about their lives in the country, you could tell that they wouldn't move back to New York City even if they were promised they could keep chickens in Central Park. 

I think about Katherine and Isabelle telling us about how they've been together since they were seventeen, the same age we were when we met, and how much I want for us to have the same thing they have—to still be together decades from now, when our hair is going gray and we've lived together for years and we've traveled places together and we have new generations of cats, and you'll have created a garden you've tended for years, and maybe your rubber tree will have grown enough to tower over us all. 

And I really think we'll have that, Annie. I think we'll have it all.

Love, Your  
Liza

* * *

Dear Annie,

I wanted to write you another letter, even though I know it's too late for it to be able to reach you in Europe. I guess I'll give it to you when I come to get you at the airport. When you come home.

Remember how we used to walk the streets of New York City, looking at the houses and deciding which things we'd like to have in a house of our own someday? When we talked about how nice it would be to have a real house with a yard, somewhere you could plant a garden in? And how we'd have cats, and everything else we talked about? Sometimes I think about that, and how lucky we are that we already have so much of what we dreamed of. Right now we have a little house with a yard and two cats. We already have that! We're renting it and you haven't been in it for weeks and I'm still surrounded by boxes and I know you haven't had a chance to begin to think what you're going to want to plant in the garden yet, but—we have that. We made it through college and came out the other side and I moved to California and we have that, together, now.

And someday...

I want to tell you about something I've started doing in moments of down time at the architectural firm, or here at home when I start missing you. I've started drawing plans for a house for us. Oh, just early ideas for now, playing around—after all, I can't get very far in designing a house for both of us without you around to tell me what you'd want from it! But that's what I've been doing. Thinking, what kind of office would I like? What kind of windows would we want in the bedroom? How big should the lot be for you to have the gardening space you would want? When you get back, I'll show you what I've started to work on, and you can tell me what you think—what your wishlist would be for a house of our very own.

Someday, it'll be a house that we own, a house that we built just for us.

I finally did laundry at the last minute (like the sloven I am) and put those new blue bedsheets you liked so much on the bed, so they'll be waiting for you, fresh and clean, when you get home.

I think when I see you at the airport I'm probably going to cry, Annie. I'll hug the stuffing out of you, too. And when I get you home, we can do whatever you want on these favorite bedsheets of yours. (Even if that's just to sleep because you've been traveling forever.)

We'll have time for everything else.

Love, Your  
Liza

**Author's Note:**

> Two friends of mine once rented a very small house in the San Francisco Bay Area with a yard where they were allowed to keep chickens. I don't know if Annie and Liza's rental house is exactly like theirs, but that's what inspired it.
> 
> Their neighbor's chickens are a cameo appearance by my friends' chickens.
> 
> (I did not actually research which communities in the Bay Area would have allowed backyard chicken-keeping within city limits in the late 80s.)


End file.
